Japan denies spying charge as Tokyo presses Russia for access to detained reporter

Japan's government said Thursday it still has not been allowed to contact a Hokkaido newspaper reporter detained in Russia on espionage charges two days earlier, as Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi publicly rejected Moscow's spying allegation and said securing his release was now a top priority for her government.

Russia's Federal Security Service, the FSB, announced on October 13 that it had detained a Japanese national working for the Hokkaido Shimbun, a regional daily based in Sapporo, at a hotel in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, the capital of Russia's Sakhalin region in the Far East. The newspaper's own reporting confirmed that one of its staff correspondents had been held by Russian authorities, though it said it was still working to verify the details and that the journalist's safety was its "top priority."

Russia's Foreign Ministry later identified the detained man as Yuki Imai. The FSB accused him of collecting and storing information on Russia's defence capabilities, on the instructions of a Japanese intelligence agency, in a case prosecutors say falls under Article 276 of Russia's criminal code, the statute covering espionage.

A two-month detention and a charge carrying 20 years

According to Russian court records cited by independent outlet Meduza, Moscow's Lefortovo District Court ordered the journalist held in pre-trial custody for nearly two months after he was flown from Sakhalin to the capital. He had been detained the day before he was due to leave the country, having arrived in Russia on a journalist visa over the summer. Conviction under Article 276 carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

Russian state television footage, described in Reuters' wire report carried by several outlets, showed masked FSB officers handcuffing a man on the ground before escorting him onto a plane; he later appeared in a holding cage inside the Moscow courtroom. Russian investigators, cited by Hokkaido Shimbun's own news team, allege the reporter had been gathering details on the number of mobilized troops and volunteer soldiers from the disputed Kuril Islands who had been sent to fight in Russia's war in Ukraine.

• October 13 — FSB announces the detention in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk; a Moscow court orders roughly two months of pre-trial custody.
• October 14 — Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara calls for "fair treatment and humanitarian consideration"; the Foreign Ministry summons Russia's ambassador to protest.
• October 15 — Prime Minister Takaichi says the spying claim has "no basis in fact"; Kihara confirms Tokyo still has no consular access to the detained man.

Echoes of the Gershkovich case

Reuters described the detention as the most prominent seizure of a foreign journalist in Russia since the 2023 arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was convicted of espionage, sentenced to 16 years, and ultimately freed in an East-West prisoner exchange in August 2024. The Hokkaido Shimbun case is the latest in a longer run of espionage and security-related detentions of foreign nationals in Russia since 2022, a pattern Western officials have frequently linked to broader diplomatic tensions with Moscow, even as Russian authorities insist each case is handled strictly on its individual legal merits.

The detention also deepens a dispute that has no easy resolution: Russia and Japan have never signed a peace treaty formally ending the Second World War, chiefly because of their competing claims over the Kuril Islands, which Tokyo calls the Northern Territories. Moscow has governed the island chain since Soviet forces seized it in 1945, and Japan's position on the territory is laid out in materials published by its Cabinet Public Relations Office, which tracks Chief Cabinet Secretary Kihara's near-daily briefings on the matter.

Relations already under strain

Ties between Tokyo and Moscow had already soured sharply over the past two years. Japan joined Western sanctions against Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, prompting Moscow to designate Japan an "unfriendly" country, even as the two sides have maintained limited economic contact — Japan continues to purchase Russian liquefied natural gas. Tensions escalated further in August, when President Vladimir Putin paid a visit to one of the disputed islands, triggering what Reuters described as an uproar in Japan. On the same day the journalist's detention was announced, a delegation from a Chinese province reportedly visited the same island, a move Reuters suggested signalled closer coordination between Moscow and Beijing in pressuring Tokyo.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova framed the detention as connected to that wider dispute, accusing Tokyo of refusing to engage with Moscow's objections to what she called Japan's "remilitarisation," and of using accredited journalists based in Russia to collect information that could undermine Russian national security.

"We have to note that what has occurred will become an additional factor clouding the atmosphere of Russian-Japanese relations," Zakharova said.

Tokyo presses for consular access

Japan's response has unfolded in public stages over three days. On October 14, Chief Cabinet Secretary Kihara told reporters at his regular press briefing at the Prime Minister's Office that Tokyo had formally requested information from Russian authorities and called for "fair treatment and humanitarian consideration" for the detained national. Separately, a senior Foreign Ministry official summoned Russia's ambassador to Japan, Nikolay Nozdrev, to lodge a protest over both the detention itself and what Tokyo described as Moscow's unilateral public statements on the case issued without explanation to Japanese officials. Kimitake Nakamura, director-general of the ministry's European Affairs Bureau, asked the ambassador to arrange a meeting with the detained journalist as quickly as possible.

By October 15, Prime Minister Takaichi went further, telling reporters at her office that she did not know the specifics of the allegations but was certain there was "no such fact" to Russia's claim that Japan conducts espionage through its correspondents stationed there. She said protecting Japanese nationals abroad was "very important" and that her government would focus on securing the reporter's release while firmly conveying Japan's position to Moscow. According to the Hokkaido Shimbun's own account of her remarks, Takaichi also denied any Japanese government involvement in intelligence-gathering activity in Russia.

Kihara, in a separate briefing the same day, acknowledged that Japanese officials had still not been able to make direct contact with the detained reporter and said the government would keep pressing for a consular visit to confirm his health and wellbeing. Foreign Ministry officials, briefing a joint meeting of ruling Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers on foreign affairs, said Tokyo had not yet even received formal consular notification of the detention from Russian authorities — normally a baseline diplomatic step — prompting lawmakers to press the government to intensify its efforts.

What happens next

The case now moves toward a pre-trial detention period running into mid-December, during which Russian investigators are expected to build their file while Japanese diplomats continue seeking access. The case has drawn wider coverage of what it means for accredited foreign correspondents still working inside Russia, including Jiji Press reporting on the arrest and a Meduza profile of the reporter's work before his detention, which noted he had been researching the history of Soviet-Japanese relations and had recently travelled through Russia's Primorsky Krai region.

For now, neither government shows signs of softening its position. Russia has given no indication it will reconsider the charge or shorten the detention period, while Japan has signalled it intends to keep raising the case through diplomatic channels rather than retaliatory measures. With no peace treaty in place and the Kuril Islands dispute unresolved after eight decades, the detention adds one more unresolved grievance to a relationship that both sides already describe as being at its lowest point in years.